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Date : 12/09/2006
Source: North West Provincial Government
Title: Yawa: Opening and Handover of Setlagole Clinic


Speech delivered by honourable H D Yawa, North West MEC for Public Works at the handover and official opening of Setlagole Clinic

Programme Director
My colleague MEC for Health, Honourable Nomonde Rasmeni
The Executive Mayor of Ratlou Local Municipality, Honourable Cllr P Setlhogo Motlotlegi Kgosi
Honourable Councillors
Senior Government officials
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen

I am honoured to be in Setlagole and to be part of the celebration of yet another government delivery milestone. Today we celebrate the fruits of our liberation, the fruits of our age of hope and endless possibilities.

Indeed a lot has changed since the days of the apartheid regime whose unequal and fragmented health services could not meet the needs of the entire nation, with most rural parts of the country without health facilities. Setlagole was one of those rural areas neglected by the past government.

It is a matter of record that this government inherited an infrastructure system fraught with inequalities and disparities. It is against this backdrop that after 1994 the people's government, your government gave priority to the improvement and development of quality infrastructure for the benefit of the historically disadvantaged communities in our country.

This was because of the poor state of our facilities and we needed to upgrade this in line with our service delivery objectives based on accessibility, affordability, equity and sustainability.

It therefore gives me great pleasure to be here today for the official handover of this clinic to MEC Rasmeni. This handover marks yet another delivery milestone by government through my department and our client department, the Department of Health. It is also an occasion to celebrate the partnership between government and the community of Setlagole.

Today also marks an important day in the history of our clinic building delivery programme, not only in Setlagole village but also throughout the province. People in the vicinity of Setlagole are the luckiest amongst others in the rural villages in the North West province. When we look around the village we all notice that people are busy. As I go around in the province during the handing over and visit to projects, I always say to the people that when you see people in construction, you must know that there is development.

The physical infrastructure in this village is very beautiful and of quality and this tells us that people are not relaxed, they are working very hard to achieve their own goals and betterment of the lives of our people.

I hope that you will all agree with me when I say that the achievement of these projects is through the partnership and co-operation of people of Setlagole, the chieftaincy and the provincial government. There is therefore no doubt whatsoever that Motlotlegi Kgosi Phoi and his council are in the same league of those traditional leaders who vowed never to betray their people. Motlotlegi Kgosi Phoi you remind of one of the greatest African leaders of our struggle for freedom who also decided not to betray his people, Kgosi Albert Luthuli.

Instead of betraying his people, Kgosi Luthuli chose persecution and was deposed as a traditional leader by a regime that despised everything African and democratic. In doing so he taught us the lesson that real leaders must be ready to sacrifice all for the freedom of their people.

Ladies and gentlemen, it was under the leadership of Kgosi Luthuli that the masses of our people entered the fighting fifties with the Defiance campaign, the struggle against Bantu education, the Freedom Charter, the drawing together of all freedom loving South Africans across the racial line into the Congress Alliance, the anti-pass campaign by women in 1956, the heightened political ferment in both rural and urban areas and the launch of armed struggle in 1961.

We are happy to have such calibre of leaders who are not egocentric. As government we salute all our traditional leaders who have the interests of their subjects at heart. We value their partnership as agents for change and development as we know that they have a pivotal role to play in nation building and in development.

We wish that all our traditional leaders could portray the spirit of Luthuli, James Moroka, King Shaka and Nkosi Bhambata by putting interests of their subjects first. The delivery of quality infrastructure to our people like this clinic is one of the cornerstones of the people's contract that the ANC-led government has entered with the masses of our people.

Honoured guests, the building of this clinic was not by mistake it was a necessity that could not be avoided. We come from an era where we saw our mothers, sisters and wives giving birth under trees and in bushes while trying to rush to the nearest clinic, which could be more than 20 kilometres away. It is time to restore their dignity and pride by providing them with basic infrastructures of which this facility is one of them.

Acting on the mandate of the Department of Health, this facility was build at a cost of over R5,5 million. It consists of two maternity rooms, two staff houses, patients consulting rooms and a dispensary room/pharmacy. During the construction of this clinic, local empowerment and employment was created through 21 job opportunities for locals throughout the 11 months of the construction period.

I wish to congratulate the woman contractor, Christine Williams of Mapule Construction and her team for quality work done in this project. We appreciate your commitment and determination to make it in the male and white dominated construction industry. The performance of women contractors like you gives us every reason to consider increasing our allocation of contracts to women contractors to 30%.

In the last financial year we allocated R95,1 million to 34 women contractors and we are proud that of the quality of work they have delivered. Our appeal to aspirant women contractors is that they must register with the relevant registration bodies such as the Construction Industry Development Board to be considered for tender allocation.

As we celebrate today, I would also like to plead with the people of Setlagole to take care of their clinic and work together and guard against those who would want to vandalise this structure.

Ke rata go leboga thata Kgosi le dikgosana tsa rona ka go re adima lefatshe la bona go tsweletsa porojeke eno jaaka e tlile go tlhabolola matshelo a batho ba rona. A re tsweleleng go dirisana le mafapha a puso go tlisa ditirelo kwa baaging.

In conclusion, it is my honour to hand over keys for the facility to my colleague the honourable MEC for Health, Mme N R Rasmeni to officially open the clinic.

Ke a leboga.

Issued by: Department of Public Works, North West Provincial Government
12 September 2006

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